Priest Is Overcome After Breaking News

January 22, 1990|By Jessica Seigel and Michael Ybarra. John Lucadamo contributed to this report.

Sunday morning`s sorrow was too much for Rev. Anthony Spina.

He stood at the altar, looking over the faces of the congregation he has come to love in 20 years as pastor of St. Attracta/St. Valentine Church in Cicero.

After announcing that the parish will close, the 68-year-old priest was overcome by chest pains and admitted to Oak Park Hospital with an angina attack.

Listed in stable condition late Sunday, Spina told nurses he was distraught over the church`s fate.

``It was hard for Father Spina to tell these people who`ve become a family to him that the church is going to close,`` said the church secretary, Melody McKinley.

Founded by Poles in 1904, rebuilt by Italians in 1960, the 900-family church with its octagon shape and modern stained glass windows now serves a predominantly Hispanic congregation.

Spina was just one of many Catholics in Chicago this weekend who was deeply anguished over Cardinal Joseph Bernardin`s release Sunday of the list of at least 13 churches and six church schools the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago will close to save money. The archdiocese will announce an additional 12 churches and two schools to be closed by summer.

More than a death in the family, affected churchgoers and priests said Sunday that the closings meant the death of their parish family-a family of neighbors who were born, lived and died together.

At Holy Cross Church, 842 E. 65th St., parishioners learned that this summer, their 200-member church and its 254-pupil grammar school will merge with the nearby St. Clara/St. Cyril. Only one of the churches will survive.

``We don`t want to split up. We want to die together. It`s our church, we love it,`` said Effie May White, a 15-year member of Holy Cross Church.

In the Back of the Yards neighborhood, four of eight churches will close by summer. Parishioners at the Sacred Heart of Jesus, 4600 S. Honore St., said they will miss the special spirit of their church shared by longtime Polish families and more recent Hispanic residents.

``You know everybody. We know everybody here. And the priests know every kid`s first name,`` said Dorothy Oczkowski, 65, a 40-year member of Sacred Heart. After mass, she sat with two friends in the church hall. They were crying.

The 950-family church is scheduled to close July 1, the 80th anniversary day of its founding.

All of the 300 pupils from the Sacred Heart grammar school will be guaranteed a place in one of two nearby parish schools, said Rev. Richard Klajbor.

Tight-lipped and teary-eyed, Rosemary Shedor, 52, has taught at Sacred Heart for 32 years.

``I`m teaching children of children I taught. Now it`s all gone,`` she said.

At St. Rose of Lima, another predominantly Hispanic Back of the Yards church, the 12:30 p.m. Spanish mass was packed Sunday.

All his life, Gabriel Flores, 16, has attended the 900-family church, with its second floor sanctuary in a squat gray building.

``It`s really hard,`` said Flores, a former altar boy there. ``There were rumors, but I didn`t believe them.``

In Evanston, some 65 parishioners who came to mass at Ascension of Our Lord Church, relying on rumor and logic, assumed their small, homey parish would have to close.

On Sunday, they learned their church and two others in Evanston, St. Mary and St. Nicholas, both much larger, must submit a plan to close one parish by summer.

At many of the affected churches, parishioners vowed to oppose closure.

At St. Attracta in Cicero, parishioners began organizing two committees Sunday, one to pray and one to lobby to keep the church open.

At the end of mass, Mike Carillo stood up to call for people to join him in prayer each evening at the church.